


In Another Time

by Ernmark (M_Moonshade)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Juno and Peter met as teenagers, M/M, Mag has his work cut out for him, some offscreen references to teenagers fooling around with each other as teenagers sometimes do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-02 00:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16776358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Moonshade/pseuds/Ernmark
Summary: Fifteen-year-old Juno Steel runs away from home and decides he's going to go the ends of the universe.He winds up on Brahma, in trouble and out of his depth, just in time to be saved by a teenage revolutionary and his master-thief father.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a reference to String Theory by Les Friction, which is pretty much just "AU: the song"

He did it. He actually did it.

After all those years and all those attempts, he’s finally escaped. Sure, leaving means that he’ll probably never see Mick or Sasha again, but…

Well, Sasha’s Going Places. Everybody says so. Give it a few more years and she’ll be busy running the world. And Mick– well, one of his crazy schemes has got to pay off sooner or later, right? And then he’ll be rolling in creds, and he won’t have time for the little people anymore. 

That would leave Juno, alone with nobody but his mom and a bunch of smelly old sewer rabbits. Sure, he might have stayed for his brother…

He squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to think about that anymore. Fifteen years is long enough to spend on Mars. He’s free now, after all, and he’s never looking back. 

He got offworld by stowing away in the cargo hold of a spaceship, and it’s a trick he repeats every opportunity he gets. When the ships make port, he begs and steals and does odd jobs– it’s not a great living, and every day is uncertain, but the chance of a bad night is a whole lot better than what he had back on Mars. Some adults actually take pity on him. A few give him passage in exchange for being the ship’s errand boy, and he takes their offers gladly. So he keeps going, jumping from ship to port and back again, as far away as he can get from Mars and Hyperion City and all the awful memories he left there.

As far away as he can get, it turns out, is well into the Outer Rim. He gets as far as a spaceport on a planet called Brahma before things get hairy.

Sure, there are port authorities on every planet and station, but none like these. Their uniforms are starched and crisp and so clean they look brand new, and the people in them walk like they’ve been practicing their steps in their free time. They don’t just give the cargo hold a once-over like the others do– they scour every inch of it. No crate is left unopened, no crevice uninspected. It’s a miracle that Juno manages to escape before they get to his hiding spot. 

The entire ship is crawling with them– and so is every single other one in this port. Are they looking for someone? Did a celebrity decide to run out on their contract or something? It’s the only thing Juno can even think of that would justify this much security. He makes a break for it; he’ll lie low outside the spaceport for a few days, just until the heat dies down. Then he’ll try again.

But when he gets outside, the city feels… off. It’s like somebody tried to render an image of a city, but didn’t load half the textures or detail layers. All the surfaces are bright and clean, even under all this cloud cover. There aren’t any broken windows, no boarded-up doors, no graffiti on the walls, no litter on the ground. 

Okay, well… maybe he’s just in the rich part of town. Those kinds of people are weird wherever you go. Maybe he’ll just head downtown to someplace that feels a little less surreal.

But the moment he crosses the street, there’s a shrill whistle. 

“You there!” shouts a cop in that same starched uniform. “Kid! Hold it right there!”

Shit. Did they see him leave without his papers?

No time to question it– Juno takes off at a sprint, and the cop follows right after him. What’s weird is the cop isn’t the only one. In seconds, he’s joined by another one, and another. 

Don’t these guys have something better to do? 

His lungs are burning with exertion and unfamiliar air. His limbs feel like lead. His eyes are darting for someplace to run, to hide, to disappear, but there are no alleys to duck into, no bushes to hide behind, no quirky architecture to slip past. 

A sharp turn down a side street takes him out of their line of sight, but that won’t last for long. The cops will be around the corner any minute, and then he’s done for.

He’s too busy panicking to notice a door open up– not before a pair of hands catches him by the shirt and yanks him inside. The door shuts behind him, but softly. So soft he can barely hear it.

Outside, he can hear the cops run past the door.

Juno looks up, still trying to catch his breath. Standing over him is a teenager– his own age, give or take. He’s good-looking, if a bit twiggy. He’d be better-looking if he didn’t look so exasperated.

“What were you thinking, running around in broad daylight like that?” the boy demands. “Do you have a death wish?”

“Only sometimes,” Juno mutters. It’s still hard to breathe. “Thanks for that.” 

The boy frowns at the sound of his voice. “You’re… not from around here, are you?” 

It’s not a hard tell. Juno’s been working on hiding his Martian accent, but it’s still a dead giveaway. “Just got off a spaceship, actually. Like, ten minutes ago. Those guys just started chasing me out of nowhere.”

“They do that,” the boy says dryly. “What did they get you for? Littering or jaywalking?”

Maybe it’s a quirk of the dialect, but he doesn’t sound sarcastic. So Juno takes him seriously. 

“Jaywalking, I think?” 

“Of course you were.” The boy sighs. “You’re lucky– they probably saw you leaving the spaceport. If they thought you were local, they might have just shot you down right there.”

“For _jaywalking_?” This has to be some kind of joke. What the hell kind of nuthouse did he land himself in?

The boy sighs. “That’s Brahma for you. We have _rules_.” He says the word with a sniff of disdain. “I can lend you a copy of the bylaws, if you want. It might help you avoid another meeting with the authorities.” 

Juno agrees eagerly. He gets a whole lot less eager when the other boy hands him a tablet. The font is tiny, the scroll bar even tinier, and it looks like this is only the first page of at least fifty.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he says. “Is there an abridged version? I only need to keep my head down for a few days. As soon as things calm down a bit, I’m grabbing the next spaceship off this crazy planet.”

“Are you, now?” The other boy grins. “In that case, you might be better off with a guide.”

Juno hands back the tablet. “Don’t get your hopes up. I can’t pay for something like that. Hell, I’ll be lucky if I’ve got enough to buy a sandwich.”

“Don’t worry about that. I could use the practice.”

“At what? Planning on being a tour guide? Probably good money in that around here.” 

The boy giggles, and god _damn_ , that’s a nice laugh. Juno’s not a romantic or anything, but the way the boy’s face scrunches up is enough to make his heart melt.

“Not quite.” The boy composes himself a whole lot faster than Juno can. “The rules around here are going to change someday, and I’m going to be one of the people who makes that happen.”

Juno’s still staring. “Yeah?” 

“One of these days I’m going to make something of myself, you know. Something big. The wealthy will fear me and people in need will call for me.”

“A real knight in shining armor, huh?” Juno murmurs, and he can’t even mean it as a joke. “Well, if you’re in need of a damsel to save, I’d be happy to volunteer.” 

He giggles again. Juno could listen to that sound all day. The boy catches Juno’s hand and bends over it with a dramatic, flourishing bow. 

“In that case, it’s a pleasure to serve you, my lady.” As if to seal the contract, he presses his lips to Juno’s knuckles. “My name is Peter Nureyev.”

He’s a little bit breathless when he replies. “Juno. Juno Steel.”


	2. Chapter 2

When Mag returns to the hideout that night, he’s instantly alert. Voices are filtering under the crack in the door– it’s clearly not just Peter practicing new inflections, and the exchange sounds too natural to be the latest in mandatory broadcasts.

He takes off his shoes before he opens the door, grateful that Peter remembered to oil the hinges like he was asked, and creeps inside without a sound.

Peter doesn’t sound alarmed, but that means nothing. The boy’s too clever to give himself away that easily, not unless he can use it to lull a mark into a false sense of security. No, generally confidence is more persuasive, and he certainly sounds confident now.

Mag slips into the corner of the front hall. There are mirrors lodged at odd angles all over the house. To an outsider, they look like nothing but a quirk of interior designs. If you know what you’re looking for and play the angles just right, though, you can see into almost every room. It’s almost as good as a security feed– and unlike those, it’s entirely unhackable.

He finds Peter in the living room, standing over not a cop or inspector, but another teenage boy. From here he can hear Peter tell the story of a particularly hilarious heist, complete with exaggerated pantomime.

He’s got a knack for performance, that boy. He’d make one hell of an actor, if the government hadn’t closed all the theaters.

The other boy seems to think so, too. He’s sprawled over the couch, staring at Peter the way some people look at the stars.

Well, Mag’ll give this kid that much credit: at least he’s got taste.

He makes one last check of the rest of the house before he makes his way into the living room, treading just loudly enough that Peter picks up the sound. If there’s something Peter wants to communicate, now’s the time, but he’s too caught up in his story to notice Mag’s approach.

Perfectly alright. Mag can be direct. “Peter, I’m back!” he declares just before he steps into their line of sight. He feigns surprise. “It looks like you’ve got a friend over.”

There’s a moment of tension between Peter’s shoulders before he turns to face him, a broad smile on his face. “Mag!” he says a little too enthusiastically. “This is Juno. He’s just arrived at the spaceport, and I’ve offered to show him around for a few days before he heads out again. No need to get shot over an infraction, after all.”

Peter really is quite an actor, Mag will give him that, but Mag’s seen him perform often enough to recognize the roles when he sees them. This is a warm, open facade, meant for turning a neutral mark into a bosom friend.

Mag isn’t the only one who noticed the shift in Peter’s tone. The new boy– Juno– is sitting up slowly, rising out of his comfortable lounge into a more proper sitting position, the kind where he can spring to his feet in half a heartbeat. His eyes flick between Peter and Mag, sharp and analytical. His expression is carefully neutral, but his jaw is tense. His hand is buried in the arm of the couch, his knuckles pale with exertion. One look at Mag has him ready for a fight.

Rough-looking boy, alone fresh off a ship, scarred to hell and instinctively frightened of adults: a runaway. Mag wonders how many of those scars on his face and arms are from living on the streets and how many of them came before.

Maybe that’s why Peter’s acting this way. He looks perfectly agreeable, but there’s no question in his greeting and no sign of weakness in his posture. He wants this Juno kid to stay, and he’s preparing to do everything in his power to make that happen. The boy never asks for anything, but this he’s willing to fight for.

Where in the world did he get such a big heart?

“It’s good to meet you, Juno,” Mag says. “Tell me, are you staying somewhere around here? Keeping close to the spaceport?” 

“Yeah,” the boy says carefully. “A little place up that way.” He points vaguely toward the street. There’s nothing in that direction except a series of government buildings and the mansions of the people who live in them. A few of them have sprawling lawns, but getting caught in one of those is damn near a death sentence. 

Still, Mag keeps his expression cheerfully neutral. “Ah, camping, are you? A lovely passtime, to be sure, but I heard the weather’s going to be on the rough side this week. If you need a dry place to sleep, we’ve always got room on the couch.” 

The relief on Juno’s face is almost as gratifying as Peter’s beaming grin. 

* * *

Peter swears up and down that Juno’s only going to be staying with them a few days– just long enough for him to catch the next spaceship offworld. But days turn into weeks, spaceships come and go, and Juno is still sleeping on their couch.

It’s getting to be a little bit of a problem.

By all rights, he can just put his foot down. After all, their chances of getting caught increase exponentially with every person involved in their little operation. He could forge Juno a passport and march him straight to the spaceport– and he might just do it, if he didn’t think it would break Peter’s heart in two.

With all the secrecy and moving around, it wasn’t as if Peter ever had a chance to really make friends. He never seemed to mind, and he certainly never said anything about it to Mag, but… but Mag’s never seen his boy so happy.

Besides, Juno’s not half bad to have around. He’s scrappy and clever, and as willing to stick to the plan as he is to think fast if things go haywire. He doesn’t have Peter’s talent for disappearing, so he tends to take the opposite route: he makes himself a big enough distraction that Peter can sneak around on the other side and take care of whoever’s got them cornered. They make a good team, those two.

Maybe a little too good.

They’re together now, curled up against each other on the couch that is Juno’s bed. From the look of it, they got carried away talking and nodded off at some point during the night. Peter’s snoring gently, and there’s a little line of drool in the corner of Juno’s mouth. Even asleep, their hands are intertwined.

He’s going to have to have a very long, uncomfortable talk with Peter one of these days. With both of them, more likely.

In the meantime, he drapes a blanket over the two boys and turns off the light.

* * *

It’s time to leave; stay much longer, and they might get caught by the family who actually owns this house when they come back from their vacation. 

Mag’s already got contacts scouting a new location a few cities over. It’s a bigger house, a vacation home that’s only occupied a few weeks of the year. It’ll be months before they have to move. 

Most important, though, are the bedrooms: this time, he makes sure there are three.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beecrime asked:  
> would you extend mag being an embarrassing Dad™ in the meet-as-teens fic? maybe not him giving "the talk" necessarily but something around that level of mortifying for the kiddos would be so good.
> 
> I was working at the tea shop at the time that I was writing this story, and I spent ALL DAY cackling over this prompt until I finally got home to write it.

To their credit, Juno and Peter are more discreet than a lot of kids their age– Mag would have felt like a poor teacher if they’d been anything less. Unfortunately, the fact that he’s their teacher means that he has a perfect understanding of every single one of their tells. So as much as he appreciates their efforts at concealment, those two aren’t fooling anyone.

Which means it’s time to take certain matters into his own hands.

The preparations are made, the plans are memorized, the supplies are spread out on the table before him. 

When Peter and Juno come downstairs for breakfast that morning, Mag is seated. On the table in front of him is a bowl of fruit, a box of condoms, and a stack of books which officially don’t exist.

Peter looks at the collection, utterly puzzled. Between the overzealous censors and Peter’s dedication to his own training in the art of crime, there’s still a lot he doesn’t know. Judging by the horror on Juno’s face, he’s a bit more well-versed in the subject, but there’s no telling exactly how far his education extends, or how egregious the gaps within it.

No, better to be comprehensive, just to get it over with.

“Have a seat, kids,” he says, indicating the chairs. “The two of you are about to become Brahma’s leading experts on safe sex.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> homesickstars asked:
> 
> Omg when did Mag teach Peter and Juno to drive

“Eat your heart out, Mercury.” Juno shifts gears and the car rises another twenty feet, hugging the stone wall as it hurtles through the air.

Mag chose an old rock quarry for this particular exercise: it’s huge, flat, unmonitored by cameras, and the pool of rainwater that’s started to fill the pit is just deep enough to soften their landing if one of them crashes the stolen car, but not yet so deep that they would drown. 

Juno is loving every second of this. 

He always knew that a reactor engine would be the only way to freedom, just like every other kid who grew up in Oldtown. He figured that would be a ship’s engine– after all, that’s what got him off that damn planet and all the way out here, and that’s all the freedom he ever needed.

But this… this is something else entirely. 

For the first time in his life, he’s entirely in control. He’s the one who gets to decide how high he flies, which way he goes, how fast he gets there, and nobody else in the whole galaxy can tell him otherwise.

Okay, maybe that’s only half true. Mag is in the passenger seat, and Juno’s pretty sure he’s ready to grab the steering wheel if things get bad. But they’ve done three laps already and the little needle on the speedometer is almost horizontal, and Mag hasn’t reached for the wheel yet.

“Feel like you’re getting a hang of it?” Mag asks.

“Oh yeah.” Right about now, Juno’s feeling like he was born to race this thing.

“Good. Now I want you to bring it low. You go over a puddle at the right speed, you can make a pretty good splash. It’s one hell of a distraction.” 

Juno eagerly obeys. In the back seat, Peter cranes his neck to watch the twin arcs of water flaring out behind the car.

“That’s it exactly,” Mag declares. “Now let’s try something different. Slow down some– let’s try for low-impact. I want you to keep this altitude, but don’t make so much as a ripple.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Juno says.

“Not at all. Anyone with a lead foot can go fast; it’s stealth that takes real skill. Go ahead, Juno, show me what you’ve got.” He grins, and Juno can feel a groan coming on. “ _Water_ you waiting for?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dykerose-deactivated20170413 asked:
> 
> Oh dang can we get mags betrayal with the kid Juno and Nureyev au I'm loving it

Alarms are going off. There’s shouting in the distance– constables are coming this way.

Juno shifts the getaway ship slightly, steering it into the shadows between the city’s levitation exhaust ports– far enough away that he’ll be harder to see, but not so far as to obstruct his view of the ventilation shaft. Things are getting ugly now; the moment Mag and Peter emerge, he needs to be ready to sweep them up and get them out of here before the constables descend on them.

“Come on,” he whispers, counting the seconds that passed since the alarms went off, trying to account for every square foot they’ll have to cross before they reach him, mentally calculating how long it’ll take them. “Come on.” They’ll be here any minute now. Any minute. Any–

As abruptly as they started, the blaring of the alarms cuts off.

Juno’s heart catches in his throat. No. No, they couldn’t have gotten caught. That was the entire point of keeping him in the getaway ship, wasn’t it? The smaller their group, the better their chances– and between Mag and Peter, their chances are amazing. There’s no better pair of thieves in all the galaxy. They’ll be fine. They have to be fine.

And… well… he’s half right.

It’s a few minutes before Peter comes crawling out the ventilation shaft. He’s dirty from the crawl, his clothes smeared with blood. Juno positions the ship to hover exactly underneath him, and Peter lands on the roof and climbs in through the open hatch. 

He isn’t followed.

“Let’s go,” Peter says. His voice is all wrong, too distant and too sharp.

“Just as soon as Mag–”

“ _We need to go now_.” Peter– he doesn’t raise his voice like that. Ever. Especially not at him. When he speaks again, his voice is raw and low. “Mag isn’t coming.”

“Did the two of you get split up?” Juno presses. “Is he lying low for a while? Peter, if the plans changed, I need to know.”

“He’s not coming,” Peter repeats, with all the crushing gravity of a neutron star. “He’s– please, Juno. Let’s just go.” 

* * *

They make their escape in silence. Juno keeps his eyes on the viewscreens, scanning the air for constable ships that might try to take them down. Peter sits beside him in the copilot’s chair, watching the horizon even more intently.

Juno doesn’t want to ask. He knows what that kind of loss feels like, knows what it feels like to try to put it into words. Peter and Mag never forced that out of him, and he doesn’t want to do it to Peter now. But there are some things he has to know.

“The Guardian Angel System,” he says finally, glancing over. “Is it gone?”

“No.” Peter’s eyes remain glued to the screens. “It was built into the city’s levitation systems. Removing it would have sent New Kinshasa into a freefall.“

“There’s got to be another way. There’s got to. It can’t all have been for nothing.” Mag can’t have died for nothing.

“No,” Peter says too sharply, and then again, softer, almost pleading, “Please, Juno. No more. We did what we could. Let’s just go.” 

“We can leave the city. Go lay low in the country for a while.” He glances at Peter, at the tense set of his jaw, and he knows better. Peter’s lost two fathers to New Kinshasa, and he’ll spend the rest of his life knowing that the godforsaken city will always be hovering just overhead, ready to do the same to him. 

“Not the country,” Peter says, finally glancing at Juno. “I want off this whole damn planet. Let’s go somewhere even Angels can’t find us.”

By the time they reach the hideout, the public broadcasting system is already blaring with an all points bulletin: terrorist Peter Nureyev escaped capture after holding all of New Kinshasa hostage. The reward for his capture borders on the obscene. For anyone else, that might pose a problem, but the two of them trained under a master thief. Juno only has a couple of years’ tutelage under his belt, but he’s practiced enough that he can start work on their new passports while Peter cleans up. By the time Peter comes back down, his beautiful hair is shorn away and the angles of his face are expertly contoured into the illusion of new shapes. It’s not obvious, but it’ll be effective enough to get them past the constables. While Peter finishes the passports, Juno destroys all evidence that the three of them ever existed.

Mag’s belongings are saved for last, burned in the fireplace while they watch in silence. A funeral pyre by proxy.

When the sun sets that night, they watch it disappear from the windows of a passenger ship heading offworld. 

* * *

Peter is different after that. Of course he is– you don’t lose someone who meant that much to you and not come out changed. Juno knows that. But Peter is starting to worry him. 

He won’t let Juno call him by his name anymore. That much makes sense, considering the threat he made against New Kinshasa, and it isn’t as though Juno’s unfamiliar with calling him by whatever alias he’s using at the moment. But with every new name, Peter seems to be drifting further away. He’s angrier than he used to be, more callous, more ruthless. When he looks Juno in the eye, it feels like there’s more than just a pair of glasses between them. It’s like Peter’s looking through the mask of another alias, even when they’re alone. 

Juno misses his knight in stolen armor, and he hates that about himself– he shouldn’t be clinging to the past like this, shouldn’t be taking Peter’s grief and making it all about him. He wants to help, but hell if he knows how, and that just makes him feel more useless and clumsy. 

More and more, he’s asking himself if _he’s_ the problem – if being around him is tying Peter to a past that he’d rather forget. And the more he tries to tell himself that the two of them are better as a team, the more he doubts if it’s true. What use is a sharpshooter when Peter is so good at not getting caught? Why would he risk Juno calling him the wrong name and exposing him in the middle of a heist? Why bother plotting escape plans for two when it’s so much easier to vanish alone? And it’s not like he needs Juno to show him the ropes of interplanetary travel anymore.

The more he lets himself dwell on it, the clearer he becomes: Peter would be perfectly fine without him. Better off, probably.

So why is Juno sticking around at all?

* * *

They tour the resorts of Venus, languishing in thrills and decadence while depriving system’s wealthiest citizens of their ill-gotten gains. It’s not just an adventure, it’s practically paradise.

And like all good things, it has to end eventually. At least these last months together are happy ones.

They’re set to leave the planet with the coming dawn, chasing the score of a lifetime in the Vega system.

Juno leaves that night, while Peter’s still sleeping. He takes his things and leaves only a note behind.

_I love you.  
I can’t stay._


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eternalgirlscout asked:
> 
> how did Mick and Sasha react to Juno coming back to Hyperion City after thinking he'd gotten out?

It’s a little bit like seeing a ghost. 

Mick thought for sure that Juno was dead– but the kinda dead where there’s a little bit of hope left, and where you can end the story by saying that you can still see the hero if you look at the night sky and connect the dots on the stars just right, and he’s totally just having great adventures in the great beyond.

And sure, that’s just a story that he tells himself to feel better, but it really does make him feel better most days. And if he’s being totally honest with himself, it’s better than what he’s seeing here.

Juno’s different than he used to be, like all the scratches and scuffs and rough edges got polished into something smooth and shiny, but then somebody let all that shine tarnish over again. But the shape of him is still the same, and Mick would recognize that anywhere, especially when he’s slumped over an empty glass.

He grabs the seat beside Juno and flags down the bartender. “Another round for the lady. And one for me, too.” 

Juno shrugs him off without looking at him. “Whatever you want, I’m not interested.” 

“Aw, c’mon, Jay.” 

Finally he looks up. “Wait, what?” 

That’s all Juno’s allowed to say before Mick grabs him up in the biggest hug of his life. “It’s good to see you again, Jay! Man, it’s been years– how have you been?”

“What about you?” Juno asks, so smoothly that Mick almost forgets that he never answered the question. “How’s the Martian calendar coming?” 

“Aw, you remembered!” And his current train of thought is officially derailed. 

Mick winds up trying a few more times– some that night while they’re sharing drinks, and the rest over the next few weeks as Juno settles back in– but Juno never says a word about where he went or why he came back. Eventually Mick learns to let it go. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got five separate requests to do Murderous Mask in this AU.
> 
> What’s hilarious is that the first Murderous Mask prompt actually predates the Mag betrayal prompt. When I got that one, I just stared at it in puzzlement for a while– because if Juno’s on Brahma, then literally the entirety of Murderous Mask can’t actually happen– Cecil would be dead and the Mask would still be buried in the desert, and besides, there’s no way Peter would have failed to retrieve the Mask if Juno was there helping him out.
> 
> Then I got the request for Mag’s betrayal. And then I got some help from my friend Kya about how to make that all work without breaking character (fun fact: the version I sent you guys is the second one I wrote; the first one just didn’t feel right.) 
> 
> And just like that, the pieces are in the right position to make MM work again. Sometimes it just requires a little suffering along the way.

There was only ever one place Juno could have gone after he left Peter. Deep down, he always knew that. Hyperion City is like a black hole that way– no matter how hard you try to break out of its gravity, it always drags you back.

Without Peter to keep him out of its orbit, he lets himself give in.

There are too many memories in his old line of work, and it’s just not the same doing it alone. Instead he settles in as a Private Investigator. Mostly because it calls for his precise skill set and doesn’t require awkward little formalities like a background check and a job history to break into the business. Besides that, there’s a sense of justice alongside all this irony. In a city like this one, there aren’t a lot of people willing to look close enough to tell the scumbags apart from good kids who got a bad shake– kids like him and Peter were. It might as well be him. As for the legitimate thieves, good riddance. If they can be caught by the likes of him, then they didn’t deserve the job in the first place. That’s just a matter of professional pride. 

He forms his own network of contacts and establishes himself in the business, for better or worse. In the case of Croesus Kanagawa, currently dangling out of a glass case in his Uptown mansion, it’s worse. For both of them, judging by the message scrawled in blood on the wall behind him.

_You’re next, Juno Steel._

Whoever’s got it out for him, it sure took ‘em long enough.

No sooner does Juno accept the case from Sasha Wire than he hears a new voice talking to Rita out front. Shit, they’ve got good timing at Dark Matters. But while Rita keeps Agent Rex Glass occupied, Juno has other ways to make an escape. He’s halfway out the window when the door opens. He’s debating whether he could stick the landing if he jumps now when the voice behind him makes his thoughts grind to a halt.

“Really, Juno? The window? Did your fear of heights resolve itself while I wasn’t looking, or are you just that determined not to see me?”

Juno’s heart is racing, and not just because he just lost his grip on the windowsill. The two stories between himself and the solid concrete below is suddenly the least of his concerns. 

He climbs back inside, pretending like it’s only the near fall that leaves electricity crackling in his veins. 

There he is, like something out of a dream: Peter Nureyev, willowy and elegant even in the imposing Dark Matters uniform. 

“Agent Glass, right?” Juno asks hoarsely, shutting the window behind him. He won’t take the chance that someone might overhear them. 

“It’s good to see you again.”

The fact that it only takes Juno a few seconds to recover himself is a victory. “Dark Matters? Really?”

Peter glances at the uniform. “Ah. Well, I do admit that the sunglasses are a bit much, but they make a fair focal point.” Honestly, the sunglasses are a good look on him. But then, Juno’s never seen an article of clothing that didn’t look good on him. “Besides, Dark Matters are the ones taking point on this particular investigation.” 

“This one in particular? Are you checking in on me or something?” 

“I happened to be in the neighborhood and your name came up.”

“Did it now?”

“In bright red, as a matter of fact. It’s rather difficult to miss. I thought I’d lend my assistance.” 

It takes a concerted effort to stay annoyed at him. “Enough playing around. Why are you really here?”

He sighs. “Alright. To the chase, then: last night I was working a job in that mobster’s mansion when I was interrupted and had to make a quick escape. When I returned to finish the job, there was a corpse hanging out of my artifact and a threat on your life written on the wall in blood.” 

Well. That’s one mystery solved. “You don’t have to worry, Rex. I’ve got history with the Kanagawas. Half the family wants me dead, and most of their enemies do, too. One of them is probably looking for a scapegoat, that’s all. There’s no way they connected me to you.” 

“It can’t be a coincidence, Juno,” he presses. 

“You’d be surprised how often they happen, actually.” Juno turns away from him to gather supplies. “I mean it, Rex. I haven’t said a word about you to anyone in twenty years. Your secrets are safe with me.” He throws a few laser carts into his pocket and starts for the door. “If we’re done here, I have a murder to solve.”

Instead of letting Juno show him the door, Peter falls into step beside him. “You can’t seriously want to investigate this.”

Of course not. But when has Juno ever _wanted_ to go to Casa Kanagawa? “Croesus being dead makes the whole thing a lot more appealing.” 

“Juno, somebody out there is trying to kill you!”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he says reflexively. Normally that kind of remark is taken in stride– just another part of the old hardboiled gumshoe persona.

Peter’s face does that _thing_ it does. Like all the concern and worry and indignation crystallizes all at once, and then suddenly it smooths over into a charming mask. It happens in the space of a milisecond; if Juno didn’t know him so well, he couldn’t have caught it. 

“Well, then,” he says pleasantly. “Are you driving, or am I?”

“Snatching the Mask can wait until after I’ve solved my case. It’s evidence, remember?”

“All the more reason for me to come along. The killer might want to cover their tracks.” 

“I’ve got it taken care of. You’re not coming.” 

Peter steps just slightly closer and smiles with all his teeth. “I believe Dark Matters was quite specific about the nature of their contract.” 

Juno meets the grin with a glare. “You’re really going to push this, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am.” He opens the door, still flashing that smile. 

Juno should have known. All these years and Peter’s still the brave knight. What surprises him is that he somehow still qualifies as the distressed damsel. 

* * *

“Quick, Rex! Hit me!”

Peter blinks, completely nonplussed. “What?”

The Camera Man is advancing on them. A few more seconds and it’ll start staging its own photos– and nothing grabs headlines quite like blood. 

“You heard me, Rex. Hit me.”Juno gets in his face. “Just do it already. I know you’ve been wanting to ever since you walked into my office.”

He’s half right. There _is_ something Peter has wanted to do since that moment. And so long as an open invitation stands and needs are pressing, he might as well take the opportunity. 

Juno braces himself for a left hook– maybe things have changed in the past twenty years or so, but the Peter he knew always started with a left hook. The impact he feels is a softer, but it still leaves him dizzy.

All these years, and Peter’s lips still feel like silk.

The Cameraman lurches closer to find a better angle, and Juno throws his arms around Peter’s neck, obscuring both their faces behind his sleeves.

“Apologies, Juno,” Peter whispers into Juno’s mouth. “But I’m not about to give you another concussion.” 

“I think I can live with that,” Juno whispers back, which is significantly more dignified than any of the other things that have been lurking in his head. The top two contenders so far are _“god I’ve missed this”_ and _“please don’t stop”_ , neither of which Peter really needs to hear right this minute. 

Peter pushes forward, and Juno follows his lead until his back hits the wall, just a few feet from the door. He gropes blindly at the wall for a few moments, slicing open his finger on the needle under the doorknob, but finally he fumbles it open and pulls them both inside. 

As far as escape plans go, it isn’t half bad. It probably would have been even better if Cecil Kanagawa and an army of Cameramen weren’t waiting for them on the other side.

* * *

The case is solved. 

That should count as a win, but it just leaves Juno feeling miserable. It was fun enough while it lasted, but now Cassie’s in prison and Peter’s on his way out the door. 

He should’ve let Sasha stick him on that damn asteroid.

He swirls a glass of scotch in his hands. “If you wait a few days, you can steal the Mask out of the PI registry. Security shouldn’t be too bad once it’s been used for the trial.”

“We don’t have to turn it in, you know,” Peter says. “You can leave Hyperion City behind, and I can leave this job behind. We’ll sell the Mask and live a life of thrills and decadence across the galaxy, always running, never looking back. It could be just like old times again.”

“It sounds nice.” The unspoken _“but…”_ hangs in the air between them. Just like old times again– that’s the problem, isn’t it? When all the sweetness of nostalgia fades, they’ll be right back where they started. And no matter how much Juno wishes he could say he’s changed, he knows better.

“Juno,” Peter starts, soft and grim. It almost hurts to look him in the eyes. “I never had the chance to tell you how sorry I am for the way things turned out.”

Juno shrugs him off. “You couldn’t have known Cassie was gonna push Croesus into that case.”

“I’m not talking about that.” He takes Juno’s hand. “What happened on Brahma. I think I always knew you’d figure it out eventually. But you shouldn’t have had to. You should have heard it from me.” 

He holds Juno’s gaze, earnest and sincere.

But there’s nothing but confusion in Juno’s eyes. “What do you mean, what happened on Brahma?” 

“Wait.” Peter backpedals. “You mean that isn’t why you left?”

“What was I supposed to have figured out?”

“Then why in the world _did_ you leave?”

“ _Peter_.” 

And just like that, Peter’s caught in a trap of his own making. His gaze flicks from one of Juno’s eyes to the other, like he might find an escape there, but he doesn’t.

It would be so easy to lie right now. They both know it, and the potential of it stretches out in the silence between them.

“Mag,” Peter says at last. “The constables didn’t kill him.” Each of the syllables comes out with effort, forced out of his mouth like a rotten tooth. “I did.”

Juno can feel the floor crack under his feet. That can’t be right. It can’t.

This was Mag. _Mag_. The man who took them both in when they had nowhere else to go. Who bailed them out when they got in trouble and nursed them back to health when they got sick and made sure they knew every minute of every day, even when they fucked up and he was furious with them, that they were loved and wanted. He was everything a parent should have been. Everything Juno had spent his whole life thinking was just some fantasy that Mick told to give the other kids something to believe in, but Mag made it real. For the first time ever, Juno had a real family. Just the three of them, together against the world. Those few years had been the happiest of Juno’s life.

“Why?” Juno asks, trying to remember how to breathe. There’s more to the story. There’s got to be. 

“He lied to us,” Peter says slowly– or is that just the world slowing down around the two of them? Juno doesn’t know anymore. “He knew disabling the Guardian Angel System would bring the whole city down. He was going to kill all those people, and I… I couldn’t let him do it. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen to me, and I didn’t know what else to do, so…” 

Juno can still remember the image of Peter afterward, drenched in blood.

He never asked whose blood it was. 

“So I killed him.”

Juno’s mouth is dry. He turns away and grabs the bottle, pouring himself a drink just to avoid looking at Peter. He doesn’t know how else to cope with what he’s hearing.

“I think that’s why he had you on the getaway ship instead of letting you come along,” Peter continues. “You’d only been with us a few years– he knew you’d never go along with it.”

“And you would?” 

“He thought I would. Maybe after all the lies he fed me about my father, he thought it would be personal.”

Juno looks up at that, caught off guard by the little detail. “He lied about that, too?”

Peter smiles, but it’s too grim and pained to be anything more than a rictus. “He never met him. It was all made up.” 

Peter Nureyev, who was born with heroism in his veins, who wore the name of Brahma’s greatest unsung martyr like a badge of honor. When they were kids, he used to tell Juno about his big dreams– there’d be monuments to his father’s memory; he promised that the day they New Kinshasa fell, he’d sneak into the archives himself and write his father’s sacrifice into the history books. It was the core of his identity, almost as much as being a thief. Hell, maybe even more.

And all of it was built on a lie. A story constructed to push Peter into killing thousands of innocent people.

Juno stares at the drink in his hand for a long moment, trying to find sense in the bottom of the glass. If there is, he can’t decipher it.

He offers the drink to Peter; he always was better at codes. Peter downs it in a single long gulp, grimacing as he sets the glass on the desk.

“You never said anything,” Juno says, breaking the silence between them.

“I didn’t want you to know.” He hesitates. “I didn’t want you to remember him that way.” 

“Like you did, you mean?” The pieces are all sliding into place. The change in Peter afterward. The anger and frustration. The way he refused to hear his own name. The ruthlessness that his imaginary father would never have stood for. 

He’s going to need time to process this– really process it. He has no idea how long it’s going to take, or exactly how he’s going to feel about things when it’s done.

In fact, there’s only one thing he knows for sure right now.

“It’s gonna take a while for the Mask to get through the registry,” he says. “Where are you staying until then?”


End file.
